Nowadays TV and radio broadcast offer a multiplicity of programs to be watched or listened to. Availability and affordability of consumer devices capable of receiving video and/or audio broadcasting have increased in recent years. This enables users to be able to watch or listen to their favorite programs when they are on move or at the remote locations. However, while being engaged in watching/listening to a selected program a user does not know that at the same time some important events are taking place. Examples of important event are breaking news or, more prosaic, traffic news.
The patent application RD-346040 discloses an RDS system, in which in one of a program receiving modes traffic messages occur in a program completely differing from the one a receiver is tuned to. This feature can also be extended to news messages audible in a news program receiving mode, in which more or less short news messages, so-called “news flashes”, are reproduced at a moment they are broadcasted.
This method merely allows the user to receive a substituted content. The substituted content is prepared by a broadcaster, preferably in a manual manner. The content is selected according to selection criteria relevant to the broadcaster and which do not need to reflect the selection criteria relevant to a specific user. It is the case when a user is very interested, for example, in sport news but not in political news. Listening to the political news selected by the broadcaster is then considered by the user as annoying and unnecessary burden.
Furthermore, the substituted content is broadcasted at a time chosen by the broadcaster. The broadcast time is periodic or occasional but certainly it is not too frequent in order to prevent annoying users with repeating information that does not change over time. For example “news flashes” are transmitted every hour, while the traffic news are transmitted every quarter of an hour when traffic jams exceed a predetermined level.